2023-11-07 05:00:00
“Any company that treated its employees in this way would quickly go bankrupt,” denounces the Journal Defense retiree Gaétan Thibault, who is chasing his check for $118,000 owed to him by the federal government, despite his 35 years of loyal service.
“It changes the retirement calculations. It delays the payment of the mortgage, the purchase of a new car, which would have allowed me to have a better start to retirement rather than tightening my belt during the first two years,” explains Gaétan Thibault, 67 years old, retired from National Defense.
Six months ago, The newspaper told the story of a former Service Canada executive, unable to obtain her $20,000 severance pay four years following resigning.
It was following reading this article that Gaétan Thibault came into contact with The newspaper to say that the failures of the Phoenix pay system, launched in 2016, deprived him of even more money.
“I am owed a total of $118,000 for my vacation pay and my severance pay,” sighs the man from the Capitale-Nationale.
Two weights, two measures
What shocks the Defense retiree is that Ottawa does not hesitate to pursue employees when they owe small amounts, while the opposite is less true.
“When I was a manager, I had employees who were forced to take out loans from the bank to repay Phénix, whereas when they are the ones who owe us money, we don’t see the color” , supports Gaétan Thibault.
Gaétan Thibault believes that the Canadian government has a duty to pay its own employees. Stevens LeBlanc/JOURNAL DE QUEBEC
Au Journal, he says it’s always the same story. He calls on the government. The employees are nice, but can’t do anything to correct the situation.
“When Phénix was implemented, we fired all the payroll employees who might have tweaked the system to resolve the problem. It was repatriated to Miramichi. It’s a big black box,” he denounces.
He points out that as a manager, he has lost count of the number of times his colleagues, who had just received a promotion, needed to chase following their extra money because Phénix systematically made errors on their pay stubs.
“Phoenix is a big black box for me,” he says.
No idea of the number of Quebecers affected
Asked by The newspaper, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) was unable to say how many Quebecers are still affected by these recurring pay problems because their system is simply not able to provide this “degree of detail”.
SPAC also refused to comment on the specific case of Gaétan Thibault.
At the end of October, the Public Service Alliance of Canada filed grievances to denounce “the unilateral recovery of Phoenix overpayments by the federal government” for its members of the Treasury Board or who work at the Canadian Inspection Agency food or Parks Canada.
-With the collaboration of Nicolas Brasseur
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